


In The Gutter

by luvanderwon



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 06:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12427089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/pseuds/luvanderwon
Summary: Ivory is drunk.





	In The Gutter

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages and ages ago for my bestie Anna (moonix) and never posted it because there was supposed to be a part two. Perhaps one day there will be... but since this fandom has been relatively devoid of new works for a while, I thought I'd share this part as it is. Enjoy!

Ivory is drunk. 

Ivory is so drunk that the stars have gone crooked in the sky and he can’t remember his way home. The street outside the bar is full of winding cobble stones and shop fronts that glint and wink and beckon and that’s a bit overwhelming, especially when the whole place feels sort of back to front now, with cold air on his face and the heat of the bar at his back. Opposites, Ivory thinks, like the black and white of his piano keys, like a sharp knife next to a dull parade sword; like the colour of his hair next to Jeannot’s or Niall’s or Raphael’s. 

Raphael has the nicest hair in the entire Dragon Corps, Ivory thinks, and abruptly feels so sad about this fact that he has to sit down. 

He’s not even sure why he had so much to drink at all, other than that it’s somebody’s birthday and the wine was flowing and there were toasts and cheers and it was nice, this once, to feel like he was part of something. Usually Ivory doesn’t give a rat damn about being part of anything other than whatever it is he wants to call what he has with his girl. Just occasionally, though, he looks at the other boys and thinks how it must be pleasant to be part of that, to feel like he belongs to something bigger. Apparently this was one of those evenings, because he drank a lot of wine and now he is so drunk that he’s sitting on the side of the street and feeling sad about Raphael’s hair, which is so nice, and it’s such a shame that Raphael isn’t here tonight because if he had been then Ivory could have told him how very nice his hair is. 

Adamo’s not here either, nor is Niall. They and Raphael were on duty tonight and stayed back at the Airman when the rest of the Corps spilled out in their shiniest clothes to celebrate – well. Whoever it is that just turned a year older. Ivory’s forgotten. It was all a long time ago, anyway, yesterday even – back before the wine and the laughter and Jeannot and Luvander dragging him over to the piano so he could play a birthday song, which he did, because he was drunk and they asked him to and everyone was singing and wasn’t it nice, Ivory thought, when they all pretended to be friends who actually liked each other’s company for a few hours. That was so nice. If only Adamo could have been there to see it, he would like that, like his boys being friends. And it was sad that Niall couldn’t come too because Niall loves parties, and Ivory feels a little quiver of melancholia back behind his breastbone, thinking about how Niall would have enjoyed tonight. 

Saddest of all, though, is the absence of Raphael, he thinks, because he probably would have done that thing. That thing he does when he gets drunk, he means, Raphael’s thing where he climbs on tables or windowsills or – well, anywhere, if Ivory’s honest – and recites poems about magic and metal and lace and the wind. He can never remember how they finish though so he always makes up his own endings. Ivory has heard stories about this happening, has seen the legend twice himself, and now that he thinks about it, he remembers how nice Raphael’s hair was when he was making up rhyming words on top of the kitchen counter in the Airman that time; swaying with ale and laughing at himself before Ghislain had to lift him down in case he fell and carry him to bed. Ivory wishes Raphael was here, in this street, to invent poetry and have nice hair. 

“Oops,” he hears a chuckle behind him and feels a hand come to rest on the top of his head. “Man down. You alright down there, piano fingers?” 

Ivorys says “garbliogewf,” and then “schnarp.” Magoughin laughs again and sits down beside him, clapping a hand on his shoulder this time. The street spins. 

“Bit too much of the wine, huh?” he rumbles, and Ivory wonders if Magoughin and Ghislain were carved out of mountains and who did that, how did you get a person to make another person from a mountain. 

“I feel sad,” he says, with a great big pause in between each word because he needs to remember how to use his mouth. 

“Aw, shit,” Magoughin counters cheerfully. “Let me tell you a joke.” 

Before he can start, however, Ivory opens his mouth to just ask him about the mountain thing, really, because it’s bugging him and he just needs to collect up enough momentum behind his tongue to make all the words together; only what comes out is “Raphael has got really fucking nice hair, Magoughin.” His head comes down with a crash like a lead weight on Magoughin’s – thankfully substantial – shoulder, and his chest heaves with the weight of being the only man who seems to understand about those curls and how really fucking nice they are. 

He tries to sigh all of his feelings out into the street like leaf litter in the gutters, but halfway through it turns into a sob, and there’s no turning back after that. 

Ivory has never been a crier. He’s got a masterful poker face and can use his knives in the most unorthodox ways without betraying a flicker of emotion. The closest he’s ever come to publically expressing any feelings is the terrifying, whimsical glitter of predatory delight when he might get to play with those knives, and the rippling inflection in his voice when he talks too much about Cassiopeia. Oh, and that one time he slammed Merritt’s fingers in the piano, but the bastard was asking for that, so it didn’t count. The point is, Ivory doesn’t cry, there is nothing in the world he cares about enough that he’s going to cry about it, and nothing that anybody can do or say which might sway him down that watery emotional track. 

Except, apparently, getting so drunk he ends up sitting on the ground in the street with his head on Magoughin’s shoulder and thinking about Raphael and his fucking hair. 

“This is interesting,” Magoughin announces conversationally. Ivory heaves in an enormous lungful of night street air, swallows down the smoke and glittering orbs of light which hang in tavern windows. 

“Just,” he chokes; the words feeling wet in the back of his mouth, “just... it’s... it’s so. Fucking. Nice.” 

“What is?” Magoughin grins. 

“Raph-Raphael-Raphael’s _haaaaiiir_.”

“Ohhh,” Magoughin breathes through a dawn of comprehension and sudden delight. It tastes like peppermint candy canes, bitterly warm and sticky sweet against his teeth all at once. “I see. You mean Raphael-Raphael, _our_ Raphael, with all the curls and the nonsense and the drunk poetry? That Raphael?” 

Ivory sobs, letting a weight of emotion he didn’t realise he was carrying ease down from the back of his skull and trickle out between his lips as he does so. He nods, and hisses “yesss, his haaaiiir,” sadly against Magoughin’s shoulder. 

Magoughin laughs, a bellow of a noise which could crack open the sky, and claps Ivory on the back with the palm of one hand. “You are in a sorry state,” he notes before, gleefully: “tell me more?” 

“Nooo,” Ivory moans, shaking his head. There are tears on his face and that’s nice, he realises, his cheeks are cooling, slithering trails of miserable reprieve from the heat which his skin has infused from the bar. “His just. His hair. Why isn’t it here, I want. I want,” Ivory takes another one of those enormous breaths, feeling his ribs expand and constrict against the fabric of his shirt. “I want Raphael,” he whines. 

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Magoughin smirks. “I didn’t realise you were friends.” 

Ivory sniffs, twice, and wipes the back of his wrist ineffectually across one eye. “His hair,” he whispers, unutterably miserable. 

Magoughin cups one of his enormous hands around Ivory's shoulder and smoothes it gently, as if he's a troubled cat. “So,” he says, softly, when Ivory has gulped some air back into his shuddering chest. “You really like Raphael's hair, hm?”

“Ngmmnn,” Ivory turns his mouth against the fabric of Magoughin's collar and mouths, the gurgled noise falling thick against heavy cotton that smells like citrus, summer and the faint, cloying earth of dragon smoke. “S'shiny.”

“What kind of shiny,” Magoughin wants to know, “like, the slippery annoying shiny, or the kind of shiny you want to mess up?”

“Yesss,” Ivory keens.

“Mess up, huh. With your hands?”

“Yesss.”

“Mm, yeah,” Magoughin's agreement is rich and warm like good brandy, speckled with entertainment and the crispy edged thrill of a brand new joke. “You want to just dig those piano fingers of yours right on in there and ruin that shine, right?”

“Yesss,” Ivory moans for a third time, then, abruptly, “wait, no. No.”

“No?”

“No, no, no.” He sits up and waves his hands in a foppish, pathetic cancellation in front of his own face. Ivory doesn't think any of his senses can be working properly, because he wants to wipe smoke and tears out of his eyes, squints through a haze that feels like he's been flying without his goggles. “No. No ruining. No. Too nice,” he fumbles for an explanation. “Just... messy. Not ruiny. It's so nice, Magoughin,” he remembers on the cuff of a breathless little sigh. There is laughter behind him, stifled in sleeves and wrist bones, but Ivory doesn't remember how to care. “So fucking nice.”

“Right,” Magoughin's grin stretches out like a cat in the sun. “What is, again? For the record? What is it that's so fucking nice?”

Ivory sighs again, and tilts his head back, tries to find a new constellation for his girl, who isn't here, but likes it when they make up their own sometimes: the dagger, the pianist; the batshit bloody swordsman. “Raphael's hair,” he whispers, reverently.

He'd suspected that the rest of the boys were lurking behind them in the doorway of the bar, but it's confirmed when a pair of huge, strong hands find their way under his shoulders and haul him back up and on to his feet. Ivory sways on his heels, and crashes backwards against Ghislain's enormous barrel of a chest, turns his face sideways and breathes in the salty, wind-fresh scent of him. “Hellooo, Ghislain,” he slurs, and rubs his cheek against the rough hemp of Ghislain's shirt. “Are you... I. Um. S'fucking nice. Yeah?”

“Come on, pisshead,” Ghislain says cheerfully, tucking Ivory under one arm like a sleepy child who can't be trusted to remember how to move one foot in front of the other. “Home time. Let's tuck you up somewhere warm and cosy so you can enjoy your dreams about our Raphael's shiny, messy, so nice hair, hey?”


End file.
